


We Were Careening

by Go0se



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Music, The Mountain Goats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five drabbles about the late Alex Kralie, written around songs from "We Shall All Be Healed" by the Mountain Goats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Careening

**Author's Note:**

> The question isn't “why did I make a 5 things fic out of a Mountain Goats record”, the question is how did it take me this long.  
> Songs references/listened to while writing this, in order: 'Palmcorder Yajna', 'Slow West Vultures', 'Letters From Belgium', 'Butter Teeth', and 'Against Pollution'. All are from the album 'We Shall All Be Healed' (4AD records, 2004), with the exception of 'Against Pollution' which I gained inspiration from as it is performed [ here](https://archive.org/details/tMG2005-10-31.aud.flac16). (Warning, it gets very loud and very warped-sounding from the bass being blown out very fast.)  
> The title is from the half-working, all awesome WayBackMachine archive of the album's website, specifically the 'Camera: Lion's Mouth' portion. Read through it [ here](http://web.archive.org/web/20050212003609/http://4ad.com/weshallallbehealed/viewfinder10.html). A second link from the website features below. I do recommend reading them, like I recommend listening to the album because it is great, but please keep in mind that the songs are all explicitly about drug addicts and there's plenty of drug/violence/death mentions. Take care of yourselves.  
> The joke with the title is that no one shall be healed. None of them.
> 
> \--///---

_  
With Your Hands Out_

Before anything else, the nightmare: standing in the middle of a field without edges, gravestones come up from under the earth like teeth. Everyone Alex knows lays in clear glass coffins, the grass peeling away from their sharp corners. Everyone's hands pressed flat to the glass lids, uselessly. Everyone's eyes are open and bleeding but they cannot see him, not like the other thing that waits just off the edgeless field, just out of view.  
The sky goes dark as the mouth closes on him. Alex runs but there's no place for him to go.  
Upon waking he forgets everything.  
  
  
-

  
_Slowly Circling The Drain /[Waiting For You](http://web.archive.org/web/20050205155805/http://4ad.com/weshallallbehealed/book.html)_  
  
Alex goes back to where he'd lost his friends, confused and tired and guilty. Looking for signs or trapdoors, some secret or trick. He walks through the dark and blood-rich light without caring what got on his hands. He kept tapes to--  
Alex goes back to where he'd lost his friends, guilty and tired and afraid. He walks through dark and blood-rich light, tears apart stacks of stick drawings with dread. He kept tapes, and---  
There are places in this world that no one walks out from. Sometimes those places are people. It's not always intentional, but that doesn't stop it.  
  
  
-

_  
Early April_

Cold morning light makes him wonder if he's dying. Class starts at eight-thirty and he's been conscious since three.  
He remembers what the others said in the last moments that they trusted him, the heavy meat thuds their falling bodies made. He is a monster and he doesn't tell any of it to anyone.   
Amy rolls out of their bed grumbling when her alarm trills. She shuts it off quickly, mumbles a greeting to Jessica the early riser in the hallway, closes the bedroom door gently behind her.  
Alex closes his eyes, waiting for the fever to break.

  
-  
  
  
_Counting Down The Hours and The Minutes_  
  
Bad, sometimes when his hands come away from washing his face with stale water he sees a blank canvas in the clouded mirror. Worse, he stops flinching after a while.  
His real face is all sallow skin and scraggly beard and butter teeth. His heart beats fast and thready most of the time; the headaches never stop anymore. The air's thick with whispers. Nobody else around. Forested thoughts make it hard to move quickly until and unless he sees It and then they're silent and he's silent and numb and numb.  
He won't last. He wants this to be _over._ He wants to be done.

 

-

 _The Last Days Come_  


Hatred wrenched thought from him and now he's burning, his hands that smothered light from all his friends now on his own neck, fire leaking through his fingers, smearing across the concrete floor more vivid than sunsets; he's dying, he's  _dying,_ Tim or the other one already ran leaving Alex with flames spilling all over his hands. Leaving him with It looming above him, the vision all his nightmares give, he's convulsing now, burning, it grows and grows, sharp edges against the window, thunderstorm-bright, reactor-bright, brighter than stars, and he can't see anything else, he can't see anything, he can't--

  
  
-//-

 


End file.
